Here at Mashape, we use a lot of open source. Our tech stack includes a lot of popular frameworks and libraries which have allowed us to rapidly iterate and develop what we feel is the best cloud API proxy and marketplace the universe has ever seen. As part of our platform, we have provided auto generated client libraries that allow our users to get started with a mashape API right away.

About a month ago, we decided to revamp the project and create Unicorn, an open source set of libraries that can consume not only APIs available on Mashape, but any API you might encounter. We built it in Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Objective-C with more languages planned for the future.

Enough about us. Today is all about you. We truly believe that APIs are changing the way we make software, and by extension, the world at large. Never has so much power been in the hands of a solo developer with an idea. We have already built out a dedicated unicorn website complete with documentation and a very pretty unicorn (thanks @dshaw!) and the source is all hosted on GitHub. Our hope is that the developer community that we love will find this project helpful and build a ton of great stuff on top of it.

Consuming multiple APIs through Unirest Library

￼What problem does it solve?

We’ve noticed that a lot of people have trouble wrapping their head around using public and private APIs. With API keys, varying fundamental architecture, differing response types, etc… there is a lot to think about. Unicorn tries to simplify the process by abstracting a lot of the boilerplate and focusing on the core REST verbs that we all know and love (namely GET, POST, PUT, UPDATE, DELETE). Similarly, its methods and response structure are the same in all the supported languages.

What’s next?

You can count on us to keep the project alive and updated, but our main goal isn’t maintaining a project, it’s helping developers build stuff. So go download unicorn and start consuming some APIs and mash them together into something that will change the world… Or your pocketbook.